{three-and-a-quarter years} Gosh, Eloise seems so much older than when she turned three just a few short months ago. Her communication and language skills are astounding. We are definitely dealing with some sass and some dreaded three-nager behavior, but Eloise is mostly just a sweet little one who is always skipping and singing a song. Aaron says “she always has a song in her heart” and it is SO true! She’s the master of mash-ups (like old-school Glee) and mixes up songs.

We still have bedtime meltdowns, but it comes in waves and is mostly manageable. The girls have staggered bedtimes now, with Daphne going down earlier, which I think helps. Then the focus is on Eloise. There is a pretty good routine regarding the things that need to be done (teeth and hair brushed, potty, jammies, two stories) but the order is up to Eloise for the most part. We also use her stories as “rewards” in the sense that bad behavior can lead to losing stories. Usually Eloise will lie in bed and read (look at books) and play around (like dress and undress in whatever she can find), sometimes for hours. Seriously, we do bedtime around 8 pm and some nights she is up until 10:30 or 11 when we go to bed!

One reason she is staying up so late (other than the fact that her wake-up time is still late at 8 am) is her afternoon nap. She was going down between 1:30 and 2 pm, but usually didn’t fall asleep until 3 or even 3:30 pm. And then we were expecting her to be sleepy and go to bed at 8? Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. So on the days that she wasn’t napping, we noticed she would fall asleep by 8:30 or so. Just in the past week or so, we have changed “nap time” to “rest time” and she goes down at 2 pm in her bed with books and I get her up around 3:30 pm. Some days she naps (and then is up late) but most days she (pretty) happily reads during this time. For me, this time is incredibly important because it is the only time when both girls are in their rooms and I have time for myself (usually its 90 minutes).

Eloise is still an amazing big sister. We are having more moments where Eloise is grabbing toys away from Daphne that she doesn’t want Daphne to have, but generally things are still very cordial. It is best if I can find some way for Eloise to help me or be a part of what I am doing with Daphne. Or else we get some jealousy for sure.

Right before we left for Mexico (like three weeks before) we decided it was time to night-time train Eloise. She was telling us that she wanted to wear underpants to bed and didn’t want to wear diapers anymore, and she wasn’t wearing diapers at nap time and was doing great! So, we sort of just went for it and told her that she could get up out of bed if she had to go potty, and we woke her up twice (once around 11 pm and another time around 2 am). Aaron was doing the middle-of-the-night wakeups because he can fall asleep so quickly whereas it would take me an hour to fall back to sleep! No bueno. And things were going so well. We had the occasional accident, but generally, it was so good. And we went to Mexico and planned on keeping the same structure. The first night went well. And then the second night when Aaron woke Eloise up, she had some kind of night terror or something and just was screaming and crying, for like 45 minutes, and would not sit on the potty. So we just calmed her down and put her back to bed. And the third night, the night terror happened again and she had a meltdown on the bathroom floor. So after that, we decided not to wake her up and see what happened. And she was great all night the rest of the trip!

And now that we are home again, we haven’t been waking her up at night and she has been mostly great! There are a few times she has had an accident because she either couldn’t get to the bathroom fast enough or was asleep and started peeing, but not even once a week I would say. The biggest thing we are dealing with on this front is that Eloise will not (WILL NOT) get out of bed on her own to use the potty. So she’s had an accident before because she is waiting in bed and calling for one of us to come and help instead of just getting up and going to the bathroom. It’s not the worst thing (because it also means she stays in bed during “rest time” and doesn’t suddenly appear in our room or upstairs during the night or early in the morning) but we are working on it.

Speaking of Mexico, Eloise is an amazing little traveler. She always has been, but this was a really long haul and to some place that was really very different than home. The flight was good and she only had one melt-down in all four flight legs. She napped, albeit not really a long time, but some. Once we got to the resort, she was friendly to the staff and even started speaking in Spanish, asking for her water (agua) and milk (leche) or saying please and thank you. And she had the BEST time with family. It was Aaron’s family from the midwest that we see only once per year and only for a short time when we do. So having a few days with everyone was huge for her, and she really enjoyed the company: lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins.

Eloise is in her second year of pre-school (at the same school she was at last school year) and she LOVES it. Seriously. She goes Monday thru Thursday mornings and every single Friday (when she is home with me and Daphne) she asks if she can go to school. It used to make me a little sad, but now it makes me happy because she just loves her school and her friends and teachers so much! We are a little bummed that her school doesn’t do pre-K, so she will start at a new school next year (before she starts kindergarten the following year!) and we are just getting into the whole routine of applications and school tours. Gosh, there are so many different schools and boy is it expensive! But, I think we have it narrowed down to two and I hope we like them and they end up being a good fit.

And the newest rendition of Things Eloise Says:

Hanitizer: hand + sanitizer.

“Mama, I really like Daphne. She’s so cute!”

“I always drink coffee in the morning. And beer in the evening.”

Telling Aaron about (diaper pail) deodorizers: “Mama bought these to make the diaper pail feel better.”

In her room looking around: “Eloise what are you doing?” “I was just pondering.”

“The people on the bus say ‘thank you driver!'”

“What if the dish ran away with the spoon?”

“My boobies really hurt.” (Talking about nursing her doll, Stella.)

“Stella threw up three times in her car seat when we were at Natalie’s house. It was super stressful.” (This past spring Eloise was car sick and we stayed at an Airbnb house owned by a lady named Natalie.)

Grabs my hand: “We are going on a date! I am wearing lipstick and we are going on a date!”

{I am only planning on doing quarterly updates thru this third year, and then I will switch to bi-annual or annual updates. It just seems like she is still changing so much this year, and also the blog feels very Daphne-heavy given her weekly and monthly updates.}